[iDC] Strategic usage of folksonomies: a case study

Fri Jan 9 21:19:27 UTC 2009

Hi Simon,

Thank you for sharing your essay "Transculturation, transliteracy and generative poetics", it's truly inspiring. I am not very well-versed in discourses such as transculturation or pluriliteracy; however my research on folksonomies and the emergence of shared lexicons could be related to some ideas in your text. You wrote:

"Meaning, and the value that derives from it, has been encoded in diverse forms and media for millennia."

I like your use of the term "encoding", since I believe that meaning is not hard-coded into these forms and media, but it's actually being re-coded continuously through social interaction. Indeed, objects are carriers of meaning, but it may be quite different for people who nevertheless share them. 

In language, the separation of form and meaning is represented by the relatively recent Construction Grammar, a linguistic theory in which a grammatical construction is always a pairing of form and content (http://www.constructiongrammar.org). More recently, Fluid Construction Grammar has acknowledged the emergent and constantly-changing nature of these pairings (http://emergent-languages.org/). These theoretical frameworks are quite useful when studying folksonomies and emergent semantics on the World Wide Web... 

Surely, a folksonomy is a linguistic model that reflects the degree to which the users who generated it (through their individual naming actions) share a common lexicon. But the meaning(s) of each tag will probably vary greatly for each individual. I'm not sure how this could relate to the concepts of pluriliteracy and transliteracy, but certainly we face a dynamic situation in which the users of a folksonomy must necessarily acknowledge and manage the multiple, co-generated meanings of the same tag. This is the case of search engines, especially tag-based ones: users must interpret and go through results that may be wildly diverse, yet all of them "accurate". Moreover, these results will change over time, depending greatly on the users' online naming acts.

Best,
Eugenio.

--- El vie 9-ene-09, Simon Biggs <s.biggs at eca.ac.uk> escribió:

> De: Simon Biggs <s.biggs at eca.ac.uk>
> Asunto: Re: [iDC] Strategic usage of folksonomies: a case study
> A: cubo23 at yahoo.com, idc at mailman.thing.net
> Fecha: viernes, 9 enero, 2009, 5:54 pm
> Hi Eugenio
> 
> This is a brilliant essay. Thanks for posting it. It is
> clearly written and
> exposes with detailed data the semiotic evolution of a
> folksonomy in
> process. Have you thought of how this might relate to other
> discourses, such
> as Ortiz¹s concept of transculturation or Garcia¹s
> pluriliteracy? There are
> also clear links to the notion of transliteracy as well. I
> think I remember
> us discussing some of these issues when we were in India?
> 
> I have a recent paper that addresses some of this at
> http://hosted.simonbiggs.easynet.co.uk/texts/trans.htm
> 
> As for accepted papers disappearing out of sight  I
> cannot say I have
> experienced that. I have seen accepted papers take a couple
> of years to get
> in print though. Some journals have long lead times. I
> don¹t know how the
> editors manage to ensure timeliness of the research
> published. I guess this
> is part of the reason academia moves so glacially. Here¹s
> to self-publishing
> on the internet then!
> 
> Regards
> 
> Simon
> 
> 
> On 8/1/09 11:00, "Eugenio Tisselli"
> <cubo23 at yahoo.com> wrote:
> 
> > Dear all,
> > 
> > I am writing to IDC to share with you an article that
> I wrote 18 months ago,
> > about a specific case of strategic usage of
> folksonomies. The article is the
> > result of a research I did immediately after a group
> of Flickr users protested
> > against new restrictions for accessing content marked
> as "unsafe"; a
> > restriction that was aimed exclusively at the German
> users of the photo site.
> > I found it remarkable that a significant number of
> protestors used a specific
> > tag ("thinkflickrthink") to make their
> voices heard. So, by using the Flickr
> > API, I collected all the relevant data and found
> interesting things. Here is
> > the abstract of my article, called
> "thinkflickrthink: a case study on
> > strategic tagging":
> > 
> > The growth both in quantity and diversity of on-line
> communities across the
> > World Wide Web, along with a number of new
> technologies that enhance both
> > social interaction and content management, have bred
> an array of increasingly
> > participatory practices. Users are engaged in bustling
> environments in which
> > they can express themselves and interact with other
> users, creating and
> > fostering all sorts of relationships, while uploading
> and sharing multimedia
> > contents. Such environments turn into vital
> territories for many of their
> > users, who can become extremely sensitive and
> protective of what they believe
> > to be their rights. Thus even a small, unfavorable
> change in the structure of
> > the site or in its usage policies can trigger
> discontent and active
> > opposition. Actions performed by the site
> administrators, such as the deletion
> > of content or the suspension of user accounts, can be
> perceived as abusive by
> > the community and trigger outrage. In such situations,
> many
> >  uncoordinated forms of spontaneous protest and
> defense can emerge from the
> > network of users. The creativity and effectiveness of
> these initiatives can
> > vary greatly, with protests ranging from discussions
> on forums and blogs, to
> > site-blocking boycotts. This research analyzes one
> particular protest strategy
> > recently adopted by a number of users of Flickr, a
> popular image-sharing site:
> > the use of anti-censorship tags to make the protest
> visible within the site
> > itself.
> > 
> > So, why am I sharing this article only now, after so
> many months? Well,
> > there's actually a story. On october 2007, I
> submitted the article to a
> > well-known scientific magazine, and after a couple of
> months I got a reply
> > from them, saying it had been peer-reviewed and
> accepted for publication.
> > However, I waited and waited, and the article never
> appeared. I tried to
> > contact the magazine several times, but I never got
> any further replies from
> > them. Has this happened to you? It was a bit
> frustrating for me, so now I
> > decided that I should just make the article available
> online on my website,
> > and announce it to all that may be interested in
> reading it. And here it is:
> > 
> > http://motorhueso.net/text/thinkflickrthink_pdf.pdf
> > 
> > I sincerely hope you will find it interesting and
> useful, and please get back
> > to me if you have any comments. Your feedback will be
> very welcome!
> > 
> > Best wishes,
> > Eugenio.
> > 
> > Eugenio Tisselli Vélez
> > cubo23 at yahoo.com
> > http://www.motorhueso.net
> > http://www.zexe.net
> > 
> > 
> > 
> > 
> > 
> > 
> > 
> > 
> > 
> > 
> >       ¡Felices Fiestas! Enviale una tarjeta
> electronica gratis a tu familia y
> > amigos y deseales felices fiestas.
> http://yahoomorado.com/tarjetas/
> > _______________________________________________
> > iDC -- mailing list of the Institute for Distributed
> Creativity
> > (distributedcreativity.org)
> > iDC at mailman.thing.net
> > https://mailman.thing.net/mailman/listinfo/idc
> > 
> > List Archive:
> > http://mailman.thing.net/pipermail/idc/
> > 
> > iDC Photo Stream:
> > http://www.flickr.com/photos/tags/idcnetwork/
> > 
> > RSS feed:
> > http://rss.gmane.org/gmane.culture.media.idc
> > 
> > iDC Chat on Facebook:
> > http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=2457237647
> > 
> > Share relevant URLs on Del.icio.us by adding the tag
> iDCref
> 
> 
> 
> Simon Biggs
> Research Professor
> edinburgh college of art
> s.biggs at eca.ac.uk
> www.eca.ac.uk
> www.eca.ac.uk/circle/
> 
> simon at littlepig.org.uk
> www.littlepig.org.uk
> AIM/Skype: simonbiggsuk
> 
> 
> Edinburgh College of Art (eca) is a charity registered in
> Scotland, number SC009201

      ¡Felices Fiestas! Enviale una tarjeta electronica gratis a tu familia y amigos y deseales felices fiestas. http://yahoomorado.com/tarjetas/